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I haven't seen many large
scale war movies come from low budget filmmakers; probably because by
definition, a large scale war movie would be expensive to make, but
compared to most of the films that I watch, Blitzkrieg: Escape
From Stalag 69 is one of the most ambitious homemade films I've
ever seen. Although the film
was produced, written and directed by Keith J. Crocker, he certainly
didn't do everything himself. Instead, he put together a huge cast
and crew to create an impressively large production which certainly
benefited the final outcome. As a result, the quality of this film
was impressive for a homemade production. I can't call the film a "no-budget"
movie because
the props and costumes alone had to have cost more than the entire
budget of most homemade films that I review, but the film was certainly
low budget. However, for a low budget film, Blitzkrieg: Escape
From Stalag 69 is certainly an epic movie for it's budget and genre.

The story of the film is much in the vein of the old 1970s Ilsa movies (Ilsa:
She Wolf of the SS, Ilsa:
Harem Keeper of the Oil
Sheiks,Ilsa: The Wicked Warden,
and Ilsa: The Tigress of Siberia).
It's about a German prisoner of war camp in World War II run by a
sadistic Nazi and the prisoners' plot to escape before they're all
tortured to death. The story isn't bad, but I would imagine that
most people watching this one would be in it for the blood, gore and
nudity. Most of the blood and
gore comes from the numerous torture scenes in the film. The
quality was good and there were actually quite a few of these scenes,
but with a running time of over two hours, the percentage of the total
playing time taken up by scenes with blood is actually quite a less
than I would have expected. So really, it's not that there wasn't
a good amount of blood and gore, it's just that there were so many
scenes without it. There were also several
scenes with full frontal nudity. Most of them were torture scenes, but
there was also a nude catfight in the showers and a softcore sex
scene. There was even one scene of a woman wearing nothing but a
pair of boots running around the woods shooting at German
soldiers. Overall, if you are looking for a movie with plenty of
blood, gore, torture and nudity, you will find a solid amount of it here
in this film.

When you try to make an
epic film without an epic budget, your going to run into a lot of
quality issues. With that taken into consideration, I think
Crocker did a great job of putting together a quality film with what he
had to work with. The costumes were great and probably cost a
considerable amount for a film with this kind of budget. The props
also must have cost a lot of money. It's obviously a lot more expensive
to make a period war piece than a modern movie that takes place in a
suburban neighborhood, but I really thought Crocker and crew did an
excellent job of putting together a believable look for the movie.
As with most of the films of this caliber, the audio was one of the
largest problems. Although the musical score was actually pretty
good (with the exception of some poorly recorded and out of place
electric guitar parts), much of the dialog was too quiet and sounds like
it was recorded straight off of the microphone on the camera. If
this is the case, they could have benefited from the use of a boom
microphone. Either way, some audio balancing would have helped
quite a lot.

Another similarity this
film shared with many of its counterparts is a variety of quality in the
acting. I can understand that when trying to fill so many
roles (the cast of Blitzkrieg was enormous) it would be tough to find so many
good actors for a homemade film. Still, a couple of the lead
actors delivered their lines extremely unconvincingly and that did make
the film look a lot less professional. However, there were quite a
few strong actresses in the cast. Brenda Cooney (who was excellent
in the film Us Sinners) stood out as one
of the best actors in this film as well in her role as Lucille, the
timid but determined prisoner. Gordana Jenell was great in her
portrayal of Frieda, the sadistic Nazi who loved to torturer the
prisoners. Tatyana Kott was also excellent as Natasha, the tough
as nails prisoner who easily wins the award for most kills in the
film. If all of the acting had been as good as these three
actresses, it would have easily taken the film to the next level of
quality.

Despite some of the
problems with the film, Blitzkrieg: Escape
From Stalag 69 is still a very watchable movie and I would recommend
it to anyone who enjoys both low budget movies and Nazi exploitation
movies because it's easily the best low budget war movie I've ever seen!